You mean Practice is a research method!

Critical Reflection

 

Nelson see’s, ‘critical reflection’, as a fundamental part of the, ‘Practice as Research’, process. It is not enough to record the doing, but this doing should be seen through a critical eye. Some have seen the critical process as the place where the arguments, in the research process, are defined. Maryclare Foa in her Ph.D. thesis [1], talks of the way she has analyzed and adapted her work through the reflective practice. Foa created a second reflective voice called ‘Thoughts during the process’ to represent this reflection. Looking back at my upgrade website, there is no ongoing reflection. The practice was seen as a lesser part, a decoration, and the focus was forever on situating the research somewhere. I will reflect here that I am not sure whether others put the practice second, or whether my panic and seeking a structure from my research reduce the importance of the practice. Looking through the eyes of Nelson, as supervisor for the PaR process, it seems obvious that there needs to be a record of process, that seeks to explain why certain directions were taken and others rejected. It is so easy to see now, from the perspective of understanding a practice-based activity; the supervisor should have been seeking to review progression documentation to ensure that a critical reflection method was being followed.

 

[1] Foa 2011